Finished Keyhole Beds; Great Volunteers; Bee Medicating

It's a beautiful Monday afternoon on the farm. We got a lot of work done last week.

Just as we'd hoped, the key hole beds were finished on Tuesday. We turned the soil and added manure, compost, paper shreds and straw. All of these things will break down over the winter and the soil will be filled with lots of good organic material for the plants we'll grow in spring. Worms really like paper shreds. We'll see, in the spring, if the bed on the left contains more or less worms than the bed on the right.

Here you can see (from left to right) Beth, Frank and Marie. They put in a lot of hard work and it shows. Eventually we'd like to add a third keyhole bed. It might look something like an upside down three leaf clover. That project was a lot of fun. It only took a week!


On Wednesday we medicated our bees. Briahn helped me open the hives up. We put on our suits. The "smoker" was filled with straw, which was set aflame. It burns slow and produces a lot of smoke. I'm told that the smoke tricks the bees into believing there is a fire. They retreat into the hive to gorge themselves on honey. I'd probably do the same thing if I thought my house was on fire.



The medication comes in a gel form. It contains a number of different oils which are repellent to hive beetles and mites. There are other forms of medication but the one we use is supposed to be ecologically friendly: botanical oils and such. We just open the package and lay it in the bottom of the hive. Then we put all the supers back on top. ("Super" is what we call the box things that contain the trays full of bees and honey.)





In four weeks we'll remove the medication and our bees should be in good shape until next year.
You can see in the pictures some of the crimson clover we planted around the bee area. It will keep the bermuda grass back and feed the bees over the winter. I love that lush green color. It's soft too. mmmmm.

On Thursday we had four people from UT's Orthodox Christian Fellowship join us in the afternoon for some much needed volunteer labor. Father Justin showed up with three of his "team" members. They were stupendous. In two hours, they completed a task which would have taken our team two days to do. They were vibrant and curious and diligent and talkative: pretty much everything we could hope for in a group of volunteers.


Guess which one is Father Justin.

That's it for now
Ben

New "Keyhole" Beds

Last week we cleared out the farthest beds where some of the basil and tomatoes were planted.


Upon inspection, we noticed that both of the beds were mostly clay.


So we decided to do a little experimenting.

If the beds were mostly clay and the path in between was clay, then we had a blank canvas with which to try something new on the farm. I had heard about keyhole beds and their advantages. They make better use of the space given by reducing walking area and increasing arable area. Plus, they look nice. We thought that turning the two long rectangles into two big ovals would probably suit our purposes just fine.

Frank measured the beds and the path. He then made a rough sketch of what our new oval keyhole beds would look like.
Frank found that, "with the current beds our arable planting area [was] 154 sq. ft. The “keyhole” beds [would] have a total area of 208.2 sq. ft. The beds [would need to be] slightly ovoid. This seemed the best way to make use of the available space."

We could increase our bed size and make them more appealing! I love how stuff works out some times!

So we got to work.
We removed the rest of the grass from the path and the rest of the weeds from both of the beds. This is a process we're becoming more and more familiar with. It takes a lot of time and a lot of patience. But we're getting better at it and we know that it'll pay off in the end.Frank marked out the border of both ovals with orange flags and Briahn (our wonderful new "intern" from UTK's sociology department) lined the ovals with cardboard and woodchips to keep the future bermuda grass from possibly coming back.



I personally REALLY REALLY HOPE that this method of bermuda-grass-prevention works. Even if we have to do it every three years or so.

The beds were really beginning to take shape.


Once we had the outer edges defined, then we could outline the inner path (with flags again) and get to the soil-preparation.

1. We used shovels to break up the clay as much as possible.
2. Mattocks (picks) worked well to disintegrate the clods of clay even further.
3. Straw, compost and a little hay were brought in and put down on top of the churned clay.
The straw and compost will help with drainage in the future and give the clay some much needed organic material.
4. We used shovels and forks to turn all of these ingredients together.
5. Added some delicious looking horse manure from Clover Creek Stables and turned that in as well.
6. Finally we topped off the whole thing with a little more manure to make it look nice.
7. Filled in the center of the keyhole bed with cardboard and woodchips.
8. And finally piled a little more woodchips around the edge of the bed. (It had begun to get pretty high with all the added material. The woodchips will work as a kind of bowl for everything to rest in.
...
...
And voila!

We have one beautiful keyhole bed.


We'll be working to finish the other one by this Tuesday hopefully.

ben